Open-air cinema against the cult or the nightmare of beauty

Skincare routines, filters, aesthetic touch-ups, or treatments to combat aging have turned beauty into a kind of contemporary religion. An obsession that the CCCB explores in the exhibition The Cult of Beauty and that cinema has been questioning for decades. Long before The Substance turned this aesthetic pressure into one of the great cinematic debates of recent years, directors from different eras had already turned the search for perfection into material for horror, science fiction, or black humor.

This is the common thread of the new edition of the CCCB's Gandules, which once again turn the Pati de les Dones into one of the essential open-air cinemas of the summer. Curated by film critic Desirée de Fez, the series dialogues with the exhibition through a selection of titles that explore the relationship between beauty, body, youth, and power. From Coralie Fargeat's The Substance to Robert Zemeckis's satire on eternal youth, Death Becomes Her, passing through The Ugly Stepsister, a contemporary and unsettling reinterpretation of the Cinderella tale.